


Death of a Bachelor

by acaseofthemondays



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, buckynat - Freeform, minor Shieldshock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 18:09:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12823176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaseofthemondays/pseuds/acaseofthemondays
Summary: A lifetime laughter at the expense of the death of a bachelor.Or, the one where Bucky Barnes finds himself off the market. Permanently.Spoiler alert: he loves it.





	Death of a Bachelor

Bucky stands at the kitchen counter, wallet in hand, and wondering just how exactly so many goddamned receipts had gotten in there. He pulls the useless scraps of paper out from between the leather slots, tossing them onto the counter. He pulls out various credit cards and his driver’s license, dumps it all on the counter and shakes his wallet until everything is tumbling out and making a nice big mess on the marble. Satisfied that his wallet is now completely empty, he picks up the pertinent contents and carefully reorganizes them into the billfold. 

But then he stops. 

He peers closely at his driver’s license (and boy hadn’t that been a test in patience, getting the damn DMV to accept the fact that yes he  _ was  _ born in 1917 and  _ no  _ it wasn’t a mistake nor was he trying to bamboozle the U.S. government).

“Natasha,” he calls. 

She sits not ten feet away from him in their living room, the open floor plan of their apartment allowing him to see her even from the kitchen. She sits tucked into her favorite chair, her body curled around the book in her lap. 

“Hmm?” 

“Why is my last name Romanoff on here?”

She looks up from her book, blinks slowly once and then her keen gaze notices the license in his hands. 

“Oh,” she says with a careless shrug. “I changed it.” He sees the part of her scarlet hair as she drops her attention back to her book. He stares at the part, waiting for an explanation. None comes. 

“... _ why?”  _ he prompts. 

Natasha doesn’t even look up. She flicks her tongue out against a fingertip, which she drags across the corner of a page to turn it. Her voice is almost bored when she answers. 

“I changed it when we got married.” 

Bucky can feel his own eyes bulging from his skull. 

“When we  _ whatnow?? _ When did  _ that _ happen?” His voice creaks and he coughs to clear his throat. 

Natasha is still reading her book. She still sounds nearly bored. 

“I have a contact that’s good with legal documents. He took care of it.”

Bucky is shellshocked, his mouthing gaping like a caught fish. Natasha is a mystery, he recalls, and this is not the first time that she has knocked him off kilter. He reckons that all those other times turned out just fine in the end, so this likely would as well. He comes to terms with the end of his bachelorhood with relative ease, considering. He nods to himself slightly, inhaling through his nose and swallows down the lingering shock. 

“Okay,” he says to himself and then repeats it to her. “Okay, so when’s our anniversary?” He wouldn’t want to forget. He’d never thought of the Widow as the marrying type but she did seem the type to murder you in your sleep if you failed to acknowledge anniversaries with the proper amount of gravitas. 

“January 25th, 2017.”

Bucky thinks about this, sussing out the significance of the date. “Oh...OH! You mean when we were stuck in the Alps for that weekend and we spent the entire time…”

Nat gives the barest hint of a smile, her eyes still roving over the pages of her book. 

“Yes, I thought you’d like that. You seemed to fully enjoy that particular day.”

Bucky’s eyes lose their focus as he reflects on...certain aspects of that occasion. 

“Yeaaah,” he sighs. “That was...that was a good day.” He can feel the dopey grin on his face but he couldn’t give two shits about how ridiculous it made him look. 

Natasha finally looks up at him, taking in his dreamy expression. She gives a quick flick of an eyebrow and a wicked curl of her lip. 

“Yes, it certainly was.” She purrs it at him, and the tone is enough to set his heart racing in his chest. She sets her book aside, unfolds from her chair, and approaches him slowly. She lifts her hands and then drags her fingers down his bare chest. He catches her hands as they reach the waistband of his pants, pulls them to his mouth, and kisses the fingertips. He wears a wicked grin to match hers. 

“Perhaps we should go back there. For our anniversary, of course,” he murmurs, looking at her through the thick fringe of his lashes. He knows how his eyes effect her. He can already feel her pulse skittering beneath his fingers. 

Nat tilts her head. She’s being coy, her face giving nothing away. But her pulse never lies to him. Her  _ heart _ never lies to him. 

“Of course,” she echoes. 

Bucky glances down at where Nat has wrapped her leg around his hip and is slowly running her foot along his calf. He looks back up to meet her eyes, the green warmer and darker now with her desire. His voice deepens and roughens. 

“In the meantime, I think I’d like to make love to  _ my wife _ in our bed.” He practically growls it at her and is shocked when her characteristic smirk widens to one of her very rare, but utterly devastating, full smiles. 

“Of course,” she says again, her voice as raw as his. 

He releases her hands only to cup her face, diving in to kiss her deeply and soundly. Nat pulls out of the kiss and Bucky suddenly feels something sharp against his ribs. 

“However, If you ever call me ‘your wife’ in public, I will stab you,” she menaces against his lips. 

“Understood,” he whispers back. He’s smiling against her mouth, breathing hard against her. He feels the exact moment she relents, the sharpness disappearing from his ribs and the irritated purse of her lips softening to something closer to a smile. Something closer to  _ home. _

They come together again, their lips and tongues dancing across each other. The first time, they do not make it past the kitchen. The second time, they don’t technically make it  _ into _ the bed, mostly just  _ against _ the foot of the bed, but Bucky decides to count it as close enough. 

When Steve finds out about Bucky’s newlywed status, he is understandably put out that he wasn’t invited to be Bucky’s best man. He gets over it fairly quickly once Bucky starts describing, in lurid detail, what exactly Steve would have witnessed at their  _ ceremony _ had he been invited. Any lingering despondency over not being the best man is wiped away when Steve comes home to a gift wrapped box sitting on his coffee table. 

He opens it carefully to reveal that Nat apparently has a contact that is good with photoshop. He unwraps a beautifully framed photograph of himself and Bucky, arms thrown around each other’s shoulders with wide, honest smiles on their faces. They’re both in tuxes and standing in front of a beautiful, old Catholic Church that he recognizes from his old neighborhood in Brooklyn. He is fairly certain he’d been baptized there. He is also fairly certain it had been torn down twenty years before he had been pulled from the ice. Steve shakes his head slowly, marveling at the gift. His fingers brush something underneath it, and he turns the frame over to find a sticky note attached to the back. 

On it, he reads: “Sorry you couldn’t be there for an  _ actual _ ceremony. But I would rather be working for the Motherland again than to ever be caught wearing a white dress and professing my undying love in front of a crowd of people.”

Steve chuckles and turns the note over to find that a website to their wedding registry has been written on the back. When Steve goes to it, the site redirects to a paramilitary weapons supply shop.

Steve gets them the His and Hers throwing knives. 

The news spreads quickly from there, and various bits and bobs of weaponry start arriving quietly on their doorstep. It seems that the team is smart (make that  _ terrified)  _ enough to realize that making a fuss about their marriage would end swiftly with a knife to the gut. 

Well, except perhaps for Darcy. Not even Steve’s attempt to distract her with a Naked Day is enough to keep her from barging over to happy shout at her friends. Bucky blushes. Natasha endures it and reminds herself that she loves Darcy and that she is a  _ civilian _ and to be  _ protected,  _ not mercilessly strangled to death.  

Darcy, who is obviously delighted by the news when Steve tells her, is less than enthused by her friend’s choice in a wedding registry. She adamantly refuses to buy them anything, and instead knits them His and Hers sweaters for Christmas in glaring shades of red and green with “Mr. and Mrs. Romanoff” emblazoned in gold across the fronts. Darcy isn’t completely heartless, so she adds little secret pockets in various spots inside the sweaters for them to put the throwing knives that Steve bought. 

Natasha would never admit to this, not even under torture, but the sweaters are  _ by far  _ her favorite wedding presents. 


End file.
